Top 25 Lorrie Moore Quotes

When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, ‘Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.’

I grew up with ‘Life’ magazine on the coffee table, Life cereal on the breakfast table, and the game of Life on the card table. People were just so happy to be alive, I guess.

I’m a little harsh. When people say, ‘I have writers block. What do you suggest?’ I say, ‘If you can’t write, don’t write. No one needs your writing. Don’t torture yourself.’

I want to create something that doesn’t exist exactly in the real world, but exists in a kind of parallel to the real world.

My father was the child of academics and was probably destined to become an academic himself but vetoed that idea. Bailed, dropped out of graduate school and just went to work for an insurance company. But the house was full of books and music and all of that.

You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can’t pay our bills.

Writing has to be an obsession – it’s only for those who say, ‘I’m not going to do anything else.’

I love plays. Even bad ones. I like the fact that actual live, breathing people are standing before you in tense situations that you are not personally responsible for.

Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.

An author’s life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character’s remains frozen in one little story.

I usually grow sick of my short-story characters and think, ‘I never want to see you again.’

Twenty-year-olds have a kind of emotional idealism about relationships and about the world that enables them to say, ‘No, you lied to me. Goodbye.’ When they see wickedness, they walk away.

You know, I’m just a very boring, not very funny person in person. I don’t feel pressured to be otherwise.

Nabokov’s adventures in language and style and naked braininess are really unparalleled.

I’ve never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didn’t say something funny.

I don’t sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.

To me, writing is much freer than dancing. With writing, you could do it whenever you wanted. You didn’t have to do little exercises and stay in shape. You could have great moments of inspiration that advanced the story. In dance, unless you’re going to choreograph things yourself, you’re at the service of someone else.

I’ve had nonstop financial problems my whole adult life. It’s always been a constant balance, year to year: ‘Where’s the time? Where’s the money?’

I always feel that the book I’m working on is my last book.

I’m surrounded by music; I always was when I was growing up and continue to be. And I love music. And when I imagine a fictional world, I imagine there’s music in it for those people, too.

Everything one reads is nourishment of some sort – good food or junk food – and one assumes it all goes in and has its way with your brain cells.

It was part of being a girl in the ’60s that you were creative.

I’m not sure that niceness is what we should promote in writers.

I think women do write politically all the time. Margaret Atwood does; Doris Lessing does.